Salsa and Sauce

April 1, 2009

Club Salsa at Sauce - no joke. That it started on April 1st – priceless. Moving from 1 Station Road to 3 Station Road – sublime. The clincher? At the end of the night, I decided to take a peek at the old venue. Under new management of Mohammed Alabi, it’s reopening as Salsa-Cambridge will be re-opening on Friday 10 April 2009 at 9 PM. I wish all the best to Mohammed, who I feel is one of the nicest guys around in the Cambridge Salsa scene. I suppose he has wanted to run a Salsa club in Nigeria for a long time, so this might help in some ways. That Vish seems to be keeping open the option of running his Club Salsa at Sauce on Fridays rather than at Sorrento Hotel makes for a great deal of intrigue. It might be for the best that I won’t be around to see what happens firsthand – too much comedy.

I arrived at Sauce around 10 – maybe shortly before. I’m guessing the people there were the usual suspects plus some more people appearing to show support. Vish was there when I arrived but left shortly thereafter leaving one of his minions to gather up the old familiar DJ mixer and CD player at the end of the evening. Apparently Nicola is teaching with Cristian and Vish now, which probably explains appearance by Lindsey, Charlotte and Annette. Dan was there without Kafe. There also were a number of people I had not seen much recently – I think some of them had been regulars on Wednesdays, which I had lost track of for quite some time. Shorty and Abbe showed up later in the evening. I also tried to guess which one was the owner of Sauce – the one Vish had talked to me about a good number of times.

I had not expected much dancing, but it went much better than I expected. The party lasted until midnight with Cristian playing short snippets of pop anthems for kicks. The windows were fogged up by the heat generated by people dancing. Most of the people walking by seemed to be Salsa people; I suppose there might be a little more general foot traffic on weekends (this is one possible trump card Sauce has over Sorrento Hotel).

Apparently there is talk of converting the remaining carpeted floor to wood floor (e.g. downstairs and the elevated area on main floor) at the Sauce. I imagine that Sauce had been used to getting a decent number of Salsa dancers stopping by for drinks before, during and after lessons. In any case, the guy I pegged as the owner seemed to be getting a little kick out of hosting the dance party – if nothing else for novelty value. I might add that if there’s another flooding (and if I were a betting man, I would bet on more flooding), it should only affect small downstairs. I know I am biased, but it’s pretty obvious which side will be favored to “win” the latest battle of Salsa nights in Cambridge even with one less ammunition (read me), no?